4 ms·

I don't know why but here's when: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=encipher%2Cencrypt&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=de-2019&smoothing=4&case

I don't know why but here's when: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=encipher%2Cencrypt&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=de-2019&smoothing=4&case_insensitive=false https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=encipher%2Cenc...

seanw444 2y ago
Wow. Apparently that's when AES and Triple DES were introduced, which can't be coincidental.
- kylecazar 2y ago
  Yeah... Data Encryption Standard published in the late '70s, and given its adoption, I assume solidified the use of 'encryption' in this context.
iamthepieman 2y ago
So basically encipher was never used in the context of the web. And the web is what made encrypt popular separate from encipher. It does look like maybe encipher was possibly going to take off but encrypt stepped on its head.
- macobrien 2y ago
  Interestingly, the basis of web encryption does use the term "encipherment" -- the `KeyUsage` field of X.509 certificates has `keyEncipherment` and `dataEncipherment` flags.
pbsd 2y ago
An interesting data point is that Kahn's The codebreakers, from 1967, uses "encipher" everywhere except for various US goverment agency quotes, which use "encrypt."